REV. BENJAMIN V. BAZATA
Bio-Sawyers
SURNAMES: BAILEY, HOBSON,
A lover of nature who has created a beautiful home place on Azule
Creek, Saratoga district of Santa Clara County, is Rev. Benjamin V.
Bazata. He was born near Prague, Bohemia, September 28, 1867. His
father, Francis Bazata, was a graduate of the gymnasium, became a
literary man and scholar and there he married Antoinette Kletzau. and
they had four children, born in that country. In 1870 he brought his
family to Greenpoint, N. Y., and in time became a successful merchant
in New York City until he retired. He has passed away, being survived
by his widow, aged eighty years. Of their seven children, Benjamin V.
Bazata is the fourth oldest. The scene of his first recollections is of
Brooklyn, N. Y., where he attended the public schools. Later he entered
Bloomfield Academy, where he was prepared for college, entering the
College of the City of New York. Having chosen the ministry as his
profession he quit the college in his junior year and entered the Union
Theological Seminary in the same city, continuing his studies for two
years, when he took up college settlement work. In 1895 he came to
California and completed his theological course at the San Francisco
Theological Seminary at San Anselmo, where he was graduated in 1896
with the Bachelor of Theology degree. Having accepted a call to
Alhambra, he was there ordained in 1897 in the Los
Angeles Presbytery, and he was pastor of the Presbyterian Church in
Alhambra for eight years. In 1905 he was married in Alhambra to Miss
Minnie H. Bailey, who was born in Maui, H. I., a daughter of William
and Anna (Hobson) Bailey, natives of Hawaii and Connecticut,
respectively. Her grandfather, William H. Bailey, went to the Hawaiian
Islands in 1832 as a missionary for the Congregational Church and spent
the most of his life there. Grandfather Hobson was master of his own
vesseL In 1848 he established the Inter-Island Steamship Company, and
built the first railroad in the Islands.
Rev. Benjamin V. Bazata was called to the Congregational Church in Maui
and there he spent two and a half years when he resigned to become
pastor of the Congregational Church in Burlingame, remaining for three
and a half years, when he resigned to devote his time to the
improvement of his sixty-seven acre ranch he had purchased on the
Pierce Road in the Saratoga district, and here he built a residence of
Italian architecture.
Rev. and Mrs. Bazata have one child, Anna Elizabeth, attending Palo
Alto high school. Mr. Bazata was made a Mason in Alhambra Lodge No.
126, F. &. A. M., and now a member of Burlingame Lodge of Masons.
He is a member and president of the board of trustees of the Saratoga
grammar school district. He is a member of the Santa Clara Council of
the Congregational Church. He belongs to the California Prune &
Apricot Association and politically he is a Republican.